Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 31, 1995                   TAG: 9505310068
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE BOSNIA DILEMMA

So the principal answer, now, to the Bosnia question is: There are no good answers. And unless we understand and attend to why this is so, we can expect more Bosnias and many more occasions for asking: Well, what do we do now?

This sort of issue often works out this way. You neglect a problem or obscure it behind wishful thinking; it gets worse rather than better. The reasonably decent options shrink, and the burden of consequences and costs associated with all the available responses increases.

This scenario comes into play especially when responses for a while are mostly posture: attempts to seem to be doing something, when the true agenda is avoidance. The scenario is inescapable when a confrontation with evil is involved, as in Bosnia.

So, shall we continue to dither and issue idle threats - thereby encouraging Bosnian Serbs to continue defying, with impunity, both international law and universal norms of decency in pursuit of their ethnically cleansed state?

Or shall we go to war - thereby widening the conflict, leaving more rather than fewer casualties, and risking the distinct possibility that, at the end of this tunnel await broken resolve, military humiliation and human disaster?

Neither option is palatable, so the search for half-measures continues. "What to do" may not be a fair question now, but it has to be addressed.

Making a show of staying the course is, at the very least, necessary now. The international community can't stand by while U.N. soldiers are seized as hostages and chained as human shields to potential military targets. It is right for the West to send reinforcements to help U.N. peacekeepers (now there's a misnomer) regroup into more defensible positions.

The Clinton administration's offer of logistical support is appropriate, too. (As it is, U.S. leverage has been hampered by the lack of Americans among U.N. peacekeepers on the ground.)

The diplomats are right, too, to further isolate Bosnian Serb leader and accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic, and to try to drive a wedge between him and Serbia by encouraging Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to recognize Bosnia's independence. A political settlement still holds out more promise than any conceivable military solution.

But let's not hide behind illusions. As prospects for new air strikes recede, Serbs will infer (once again) that defiance brings dividends. Diplomacy in this case has to be buttressed by a credible threat of force, which is clearly lacking. And the deployment of reinforcements only puts off a decision on the fate of the U.N. presence. That decision can't be delayed much longer.

The Bosnian Serbs' recent actions have reinforced global recognition that they are a vicious lot appeased at the peril of international order. But the dilemma on the ground remains essentially unchanged: peacekeepers sent to keep a peace that doesn't exist, to defend safe havens that are unsafe, to implement a peace settlement that cannot be implemented, to protect a humanitarian mission that the peacekeepers aren't able to protect - in a world that hates what it is witnessing but not enough to accept the sacrifices necessary to stop it.

The only difference now is that the crisis and the options for addressing it have become even more untenable. The West stands closer to accommodating genocide, or the Balkans stands closer to the precipice of widened war. The search for a middle way must continue, both in economic and diplomatic efforts to isolate the Serbs and force a settlement, and in military efforts that punish the Serbs without necessarily expanding the carnage. Outrages like the seizure of hostages and the shelling of civilians cannot be tolerated.

But, meantime, a broader agenda must be pursued: both to defend the integrity of the United Nations and to develop an international mediating agency and police force capable of defusing tribal conflicts before they spin out of control.